Let’s begin in the beginning where we are on our own. When you are walking across Gallaudet University, you will see a rise of a gleaming memorial to discover your Deaf identity in this time line. The old bricks of great hands built Gallaudet University together, the ambitious effort to create a Deaf-space integrated, so connected, ASL continue to flourish. With the sidewalks that has hold the foot prints of Great Hotchkiss, Foster, Draper, Amos, Veditz, Tiegel, Fay, Hanson, McGregor, Clerc and list of game changers had found their home.

As Laurent Clerc writes, “A knowledge of history is extremely useful; it lays before our eyes the great picture of the generations that have preceded us; and in relating the events which passed in their time…it lays before us the precepts of the wise…of all ages.”

Just any time you see the flag of Gallaudet University, the welcome would be your entrance to your home. The flag flap in the wind at the at the entrance to each of our eyes–for the higher learning mecca in Deaf world. That is where the most attractive piece of human being and the state of being Deaf.

For the purpose of the journey for Gallaudet University, the most important Gallaudetian motto: There is No Other Place Like This in The World. By far came in the year of 1864, the search for home to empower Deaf people, no longer in the sullen silence of despair had found hope in National Deaf-Mute College now known today as Gallaudet University. What is Deaf Space and why should Gallaudet be your home? One of its key ideas, the creation of having Gallaudet as your home, helps to continue the future of Deaf stories there, and will not be forgotten. Let’s carry the flames of 1864 to today.

To make it even more real home, it would take a breathtaking in its sheer scope to make radical changes, for example, get involved and in repealing Audism on Gallaudet campus. Let’s end the witch-hunt. Funding is the name of the game. Tough-on-hate policies. Work to defeat fear-mongering culture. Ban hearing privileges.

Stop allowing propaganda style to infiltrate our common senses. Gallaudet University needs to bring ASL ethics and philosophy back into Gallaudet’s higher learning system. Today on the campus of Gallaudet University, I was told that it is only 50% of people who works there do not know ASL. Is there any validity why we should bring it up in this dialogue in a concrete reason?

If we do not take action above then why are we still creating a culture of fear? How would you pick to make Gallaudet your home? Even today, the energy of Gallaudet viewed as an important “cardinal” chapter in Deaf community, the glory years of ASL stories, and the old Deaf souls, still carry satisfying memories around Gallaudet community. Then it is time to think whether you should pick Gallaudet University as your home. Hey, are you home now?

-JT

Copyright © 2017 Jason Tozier

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